


Nominative Particles and Accusative Forms (or, Brian has a fun new project)

by ArtemisTheHuntress



Category: The Strange Case of Starship Iris (Podcast)
Genre: Brian talks excitedly about linguistics and Arkady goes 'uh-huh' a lot, Dialogue-Only, Gen, Languages and Linguistics, Linguistics, No seriously I have a degree in linguistics and I am going to USE IT, Season 1, Vree Chel Noke, just Brian (and me) getting extremely enthusiastic about language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-12 16:01:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29013243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtemisTheHuntress/pseuds/ArtemisTheHuntress
Summary: "... Kinda funny that Vree Chel Noke has an instrumental case but not a dative case!  The accusative is apparently used as a dative.  Mostly.  And in most directional prepositional forms.  And honestly the genitive is really just a modified accusative too when you look at it.""Uh-huh."----Brian talks through a very fun linguistics problem. Set during early Season 1.
Relationships: Brian Jeeter & Arkady Patel
Comments: 13
Kudos: 24
Collections: TSCOSI Week 2021





	Nominative Particles and Accusative Forms (or, Brian has a fun new project)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [TSCOSI Week](https://tscosi-week.tumblr.com/) day 3: Brian Jeeter!
> 
> I like linguistics a lot.

"… and, y'know, classical Vree Chel Noke the way it got described in the dictionary, it has pronouns inflected by case, right? Four of 'em: nominative, accusative, genitive, and instrumental. Kinda funny that Vree Chel Noke has an instrumental case but not a dative case! The accusative is apparently used as a dative. Mostly. And in most directional prepositional forms. And honestly the genitive is really just a modified accusative too when you look at it."

"Uh-huh."

"But! Vree Chel Noke—or, Classical Vree Chel Noke, I guess—it's mostly an isolating language, right? Well, there's some inflecting—verbs inflect by number but not by person or tense. They do inflect by mood—imperative is a different form from indicative, and there's an infinitive. And, like I said, pronouns inflect by four cases, but most nouns only two, nominative and accusative. I gotta guess proto-Vree-Chel-Noke used the other cases a lot more, because I just look at it and go, why have an instrumental case that only appears in pronouns? How often do you really inflect pronouns in the instrumental, right?"

"Uh-huh."

"So that means classical Vree Chel Noke was already moving from a highly synthetic to a much more isolating and analytic structure. Word order and prepositional particles are really important in classical Vree Chel Noke!"

"Uh-huh."

"But the exciting thing is, I think the Vree Chel Noke that the _swarm_ is speaking is an adapted version—well, I mean, I guess, not _adapted,_ y'know? But a version that's evolved in isolation for—how long? Who knows? Man. It's exciting! Who have they been talking to? Themselves? Can an AI swarm develop language drift like that? Wouldn't they speak precisely all the time, being, y'know, computers? I'm not a computer person. Hey, Arkady, you're a computer person. Would an AI swarm talk to each other in a way that would allow their language to evolve the way biological species do?"

"Mm."

"Because that's clearly what they've done! Dude, it's so cool. I told you how the swarm was using 'we' and 'us' weirdly, right? Like, their grammar didn't make a lot of sense. Vree Chel Noke is pretty word-order dependent, and the nominative and the accusative pronouns were in the wrong places in the sentence. But I figured out what they were doing—they've taken case out of pronouns entirely! Pronouns aren't case-marked anymore! They collapsed to the accusative for everything! And because the case-marking is lost, except on the genitive which I already said was basically just a suffix on the accusative anyway, they adapted a new accusative prepositional particle. So the word "frun," which is classical Vree Chel Noke for 'at,' basically, they put it in front of the direct object to make the word accusative! So you don't say 'croy' anymore to mean 'us', you say ' _frun_ croy'. 'Croy', unmarked, just means "we."

"Uh- _huh._ "

"So you'd think they don't use _nak_ anymore at all, right? But they do! Which is wild."

" _Uh_ -huh."

"And I think what's going on—they split the conceptual meaning of the first person plural nominative and first person plural accusative _to represent different parts of the swarm!_ It's amazing, dude! It's a conceptual split that wouldn't really happen for a human society, but makes total sense for an AI swarm with a different conception of identity! Because the accusative form has collapsed into an unmarked form, the nominative _nak_ is now marked as meaning something else—a different 'we', as it were!"

"Uh-huhhh."

"And because they're doing _that,_ and because I didn't hear them use any singular forms at all and I'm not actually positive they use the singular anymore _either,_ that also means that the pronouns are picking up prefixes and suffixes. They don't conjugate by case or number anymore, so they're attracting particles to clarify what they mean. Classical Vree Chel Noke pronouns don't take prefixes or suffixes at all, but the swarm's do! You do not get constructions like 'nakvach' or 'croykaba' in classical Vree Chel Noke. Those are modality modifiers. There's _negation_ in there. They used to be part of verb conjugations but now they're particle affixes. On the pronouns of all things! It's amazing. You know what this means, Arkady? The swarm's Vree Chel Noke is becoming _agglutinative!"_

"That sure is an incredible nerd thing, Brian. But, remind me, don't you have a fiancxé whose job it is to listen to stuff like this? While my job is to fix the ship? Which I am _trying_ to _do_?"

"Oh, Krejjh kicked me out of the cockpit hours ago, said I could only come back once I'd 'gotten this out of my human system'."

"And I became the unlucky recipient because…?"

"Because Captain Tripathi is busy and Violet is too shy to tell me to go away if I'm bothering her."

"Glad you respect Sana's time but not mine."

"Nah! Just respect your honesty."

"So if _I_ tell you you're bothering me and to go away…?"

"Sorry, dude, you know me too well, you're stuck with me."

"Then pick up a wrench and help, if you're not going away."

"Sure thing. Right, so, _ka_ seems to be doing negation work, on _ba,_ which I think is a subjunctive particle, which isn't actually related to the subjunctive forms in classical Vree Chel Noke, but it might come from _bal,_ the plural present indicative form of…"

**Author's Note:**

> I had a vague idea that for this day I'd drop an entire Vree Chel Noke conlang. That did not happen. Developing one [from what little we see](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oaamRIB527LiFySv-BrVLl3jxDV2NOp0ZFs_5-MgGas/edit#gid=2021939412) is a really fun exercise, though, and the things Brian talks about here are really notable linguistics things going on in it!
> 
> And if you want to talk more about conlanging I am always super down to.


End file.
